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In a bid to boost quality education across technical institutes, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has this year mandated that 10 per cent of courses be taken up through massive online open courses (MOOCs) to encourage credit based learning.

On the other hand, to bridge the industry-academia gap as well as reduce faculty shortage, the council is setting up a faculty development centre at Vadodara this year.

Given the industry's feedback on unemployability of students, AICTE has also asked institutes to take 20 per cent of the faculty from industry bodies as adjunct faculty members under the revised norms this year.

"We are looking at improving quality of institutes and taking several steps accordingly.When industry representatives will come to teach at campuses, automatically there will be friendship and synergy with the faculty, which should reduce the industry-academia gap and help students become more employable," Anil Sahasrabudhe, chairman of the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) told Business Standard.

The council expects number of engineering seats to reduce this year from 1.8 million to 1.6 million even as roughly 200 institutes are likely to close down. "We received applications for closure from over 300 institutes but gave approval to only 150-200 such institutes. Similarly, this year around 600 new institutes have applied for approval, of which 100-150 new institutes have been approved by AICTE. However, most number of applications for new institutes have been for pharmacy colleges," said Sahasrabudhe.

According to the AICTE chairman, there are currently 10,800 technical institutes, including engineering, management, pharmacy, architecture and hotel management. He added that in all 150,000 technical seats including engineering and management fall vacant every year.

Meanwhile, asserting on faculty shortage, Sahasrabudhe said that educational institutes in the country were facing a faculty shortage of around 30 per cent, thereby impacting the quality of education. The council is banking on the 20 per cent induction of faculty from industry to address the issue as well as enhance employability of students.